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Vancouver: Preparing a Cycling City

A Cycling Campaign Talk with Bonnie Fenton, former Chair of the City of Vancouver's Bicycle Advisory Committee

When: Friday, 2nd July 2010, 7 pm
Where: Darlington Media Workshop (Arts Centre)

How does Darlington compare with other towns and cities around the world that are starting out, from a low base, to make cycling a popular everyday means of transport? Vancouver, in British Columbia, Canada, is a city with a similar transport history to ours. But a new regime is trying to change things. On entering office at the end of 2008, Vancouver's centre-left local government pledged to make Vancouver the greenest city in the world by 2020 and cycling is part of that plan. Vancouver currently has a cycling mode share of about 4% and has set a goal of 10% by 2020.

Cycling advocacy was a rather slow slog for many years in Vancouver but the seeds that have been sown seem finally to be bearing fruit. Bonnie will take a look at the development of cycling in Vancouver (and the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition) over the past 10-15 years. She will touch on issues like:

* getting started: making friends at city (town) hall
* knowing what you want: with car traffic or separated facilities?
* reaching the non-converted: education and promotion
* the money question: can we afford (not) to do it?
* "the next Paris": public bike sharing
* signs of progress: peer pressure forces and two Vancouver city councillors to take a cycling skills course

Many of these issues are central to Darlington as well, and reflect much of the work of the Cycling Campaign here:

* consulting with the council over infrastructure
* cycling in the Pedestrian Heart
* arguing for good cycling infrastructure on main and busy roads
* the film and book "Beauty and the Bike“ (which has already been screened in Vancouver!)
* our Bike Hire scheme Darlovelo (10 bikes, rising to 30 bikes soon)

Come along and meet Bonnie next Friday evening, July 2nd, at 7pm, and enjoy a rare chance to meet a cycling advocate from across the ocean.

The Darlington Cycle Challenge is a free, incentive based initiative organised by Challenge for Change and the CTC working with the LocalMotion team at Darlington Borough Council to promote cycling in Darlington Borough.

The Challenge takes place this year between 5th July and 25th July and we're hoping to get 50 local companies to register and over 600 people logging trips during the Challenge period.

The Darlington Cycle Challenge is not about cycling to work, but just about getting people to discover the joys of cycling. By registering on our website, you are automatically entered into a draw to win a bike worth £450. People who log trips during the Challenge can win High Street shopping vouchers and people who encourage others to try riding will be given Odeon tickets.

Companies who encourage the highest percentage of staff to try cycling will also win cycling "packs" to distribute to their staff and also gain excellent positive publicity.

Please check out the website to see what is happening.

Darlington Cycle Challenge website

My workplace took part in this last year with a lot of staff getting involved, including getting a mention in a retirement speech as something that had got a colleague into cycling as something she'll continue in retirement.

Cycling in the rain of the Netherlands

This last week, cycling to work has been an absolute pleasure. The weather has been perfect for cycling on a morning (cool but dry and sunny); in fact, since the snow cleared, we've had pretty much perfect cycling weather in Darlington for the last three or four months.

But I still see the same few cyclists on the roads and bike paths. maybe three or four other riders on a good day, on my 2.5 mile to work that goes through the town centre.

Meanwhile, on a rainy day in Utrecht in the Netherlands...

(Mark Wagenbuur's excellent video found via David Hembrow's excellent blog: A view from the cycle path - Utrecht in the rain

A new tool to help identify where the best places are to invest in cycling has been launched by consultant Steer Davies Gleave.

The cycling potential index aims to provide an objective measurement of cycling potential by scoring three attributes of an area: its hilliness, socio-demographics, and length of journey to work trips.

The index can provide results at different levels of spatial detail, such as an entire urban area or a neighbourhood. You can download the paper for more information on how the index was calculated, along with the full rankings of the 47 towns and cities that were surveyed.

Beauty and the Bike-What Happened Next?

The excitement of the film premiere is over. Back we go to "normal" life in Darlington. We've managed to keep the beautiful dutch bikes - in fact we're going to buy 40 more this year and expand the bike hire scheme. But how many girls will keep on cycling? We know that cycling is still "uncool" for many UK teenagers - perhaps because it feels so unsafe on our meagre infrastructure? Here, one of the girls from Beauty and the Bike, Lauren Pyrah, comes behind the camera to ask what is happening to the Darlington girls now. Kate, one of the original group, is joined by Francesca to shout the praises of everyday cycling. But Ashley has stopped. Why? And will politicians listen?

Leading cycling campaigner, Karl McCracken is the guest speaker at Darlington Cycling Campaign’s forthcoming open lecture event.

The second event of the new DCC season is on Friday 19th March when we welcome Karl McKraken. He has titled his illustrated talk "What's needed to make riding a bike part of the transport rather than the sports & leisure agenda"

This will certainly chime with any cyclist who views their bicycle as a legitimate means of everyday transport and yet wonders to themselves…’Surely, things could be better than this?’?

Karl’s talk will be very much an open forum, with everyone encouraged to ask questions and voice opinions. For more information on the McCracken view of everyday cycling, please visit his website at www.mccracken.me.uk

The talk is being held at Darlington Arts Centre on Friday 19th March, starting from 7.30pm in the Media Workshop, Entry is free and open to all.

Carlton Reid, that’s Mr. Cycling to you and I, is the Darlington Cycling Campaign’s first guest speaker of the 2010 season. Carlton possess an unrivalled knowledge of all things cycling and certainly has a thorough understanding of the issues and concerns as well as solutions for the likes of you and I, that is, the every day cyclist, be that for leisure and pleasure or simply getting from one place to another.

The evening promises to be insightful, amusing and fun. Entry is free, alas the beer is not…you could of course bring your own!

Check out Carlton on the following websites…enjoy.

www.bikebiz.com
www.bikeforall.net
http://quickrelease.tv/

Where Darlington Media Workshop (The Arts Centre)
When Friday, 15 January 2010
Time 7pm for a 7.30pm start.

Looking forward to seeing you!

Beauty and the Bike Premiere

The UK premiere of this 18 months-in-the-making documentary finally hit the big screen on Wednesday December 9th at 7pm in Darlington Arts Centre. The event was a sell-out, with a second screening needed to accommodate everyone that wanted to attend. It was a fantastic evening, with acclaim for the work coming from both cycling advocates and film-makers. This, and the world-wide interest being created by the 8 minute short drawn from the full documentary, suggests the film is set to make a significant impact on cycling policy.

"Why do British girls stop cycling? By simply asking this basic question, the film reveals the damage that has been done by 50 years of car-centric transport policies. Whilst we fill our lives with debates about risk assessment, cycle helmets, cycle training and marketing strategies to try to persuade people to cycle more, the basic barriers to cycling remain untouched - generous urban planning towards the car, and the resultant poor motorist behaviour towards cyclists. Is it any wonder that most people find cycling unattractive in the UK, but attractive in cycling-friendly towns and cities? It's the infrastructure, stupid!"

Darlington Cycling Campaign has been closely involved in the Beauty and the Bike project, which has already resulted in a successful bid to Bike Hub for funding to expand the Bike Pool established by the film project.

The film is being released on DVD, together with an accompanying book. Details are available on the Beauty and the Bike website.

Cycling Campaign Wins Bike Hub Funding

Darlington Cycling Campaign has been awarded one of just three New Ideas Fund to build on the work of the Beauty and the Bike project. The Campaign's submission is for a bike pool of the kind of dutch-style bikes that are proving so popular amongst young women who want to cycle. With funding for between 60 and 100 bikes, and support staff to promote the bike pool in workplaces, colleges and schools, the aim is to kick-start a cycling culture in the town that is more attractive to women in particular.

The documentary Beauty and the Bike, which will be premiered in Darlington Arts Centre on Wednesday 9th December, found that peer group culture is an important barrier to young women cycling. But where small groups got together to start using stylish bikes, the barriers began to crumble.

The Campaign also hopes that a growing culture of gentle cycling in the town will lead to better quality infrastructure. As one of the Beauty and the Bike girls said, "We're getting the lovely bikes, we've got the lovely girls to ride them. Now we are looking forward to the lovely cycle paths".

Darlington Cycling Campaign organised a farewell party on Thursday for the many participants of the Beauty and the Bike project. It marked the end of one year of filming the remarkable story of these young women by Darlington Media Group, who hosted the event. Girls from cycling-friendly Bremen in Germany had just spent a week in Darlington exploring what it is like to cycle in a typical British town.

Editing now begins in earnest, whilst photographer Phil Dixon will be continuing to document the Darlington girls for a few more weeks. He and German portrait photographer Sabine Bungert are working towards a book about the project, which will also feature an essay by cycling activist and Cycling Campaign member Beatrix Wupperman.

The project began a year ago with just one regular cyclist amongst these teenagers. Now there are 13 bikes out on long-term loan, and a waiting list of 7 more. Plans are now afoot to formally constitute the scheme.

The film, which will be premiered in December, explores why so many British teenage girls give up cycling - and what needs to be done to reverse the trend. Perhaps these photographs are a clue. They are all regular cyclists, and most are now members of our Campaign.

Reducing car use by promoting cycling - how is Darlington doing?

In his excellent blog, David Hembrow posts to a story about how many of the ten most likely measures to decrease short car journeys made in towns involve promoting cycling. (I'm reproducing the list below, but you should click through to his blog, as he provides links to real life examples of each measure.)

Here's the list, with bike-promoting measures highlighted:

* priority for cyclists at traffic lights
* make a town impossible to traverse by car (segmentation)
* providing good and safe bicycle routes
* improve accessibility of schools for cyclists in comparison to motorists
* decrease number of parking places
* parking at a fee/higher parking fees
* maintenance of bicycle parking facilities
* free/high-quality bicycle parking
* delivery services
* promote independent cycling by children

As you can see, six of the ten measures involve promoting cycling.

Now for a fun game. How many of these measures have been implemented in Darlington?

Priority for cyclists at traffic lights? No. There still isn't a single Advanced Stop Line in the whole town. At some tucan crossings in town which are not signalised (i.e. not synchronised with other lights to promote traffic flow) there are very long waits when there's no reason they couldn't change straight away.

Make a town impossible to traverse by car (segmentation)? No. Though it is impossible to traverse by bike, if you still to "safe" routes.

Providing good and safe bicycle routes? There are now some safe cycle routes (such as the ETC, the Riverside Route, the black path) but they often require indirect routes, have missing sections, require dangerous road crossings, are ungritted in winter or have long sections which would feel unsafe in the dark.

Improve accessibility of schools for cyclists in comparison to motorists? Increasing the numbers of children travelling to schools by bike has been one of the major successes in Darlington. However, this has been through soft measures like bike training, reward schemes and easy infrastructure like covered bike parking. I don't know of any schools where measures have been put in place to actually make it easier to get to a school by bike than by car.

Decrease number of parking places? Not in public car parks, though I think new building schemes have had the parking spaces limited. There are several resident only parking schemes around the town centre periphery.

Parking at a fee/higher parking fees? The hourly parking charge has recently increased in council car parks, though parking is free after 9pm, all day parking is still very cheap and the 3 for 2 offer is, I think, still running.

Maintenance of bicycle parking facilities? What bike parking facilities? There are some sheffield stands scattered about, but parking when quickly calling in to the town centre or visiting a school or other building is still very poor.

Free/high-quality bicycle parking? See above. Also, where is the secure parking for commuters to the town centre?

Delivery services? Pretty much all the supermarkets offer deliveries for internet shopping, and some offer the chance to have shopping bought in store delivered. Is there scope for an enterprising person to offer a drop-off point in the town centre for people to leave their shopping and then deliver it later in the day?

Promote independent cycling by children? There has been a lot of promotion of cycling to school, but is there any to encourage children to cycle to their friends' houses, to after school clubs or the cinema? If they did, would there be secure parking available or safe, legal routes?

Have I missed any brilliant schemes? Car use in Darlington has supposedly fallen, but how much of that is down to the recession or limited to the school run? How much more could it be reduced with the above methods?

Bike and Trains Study Tour, Netherlands

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The All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group visited the Netherlands in April 2009 with officials from British cycling organisations. This excellent video by Newcastle-based Carlton Reid of QuickreleaseTV documents the group's findings.

Carlton Reid will be a guest speaker of Darlington Cycling Campaign this coming autumn.

The Forgotten Art of Political Rebellion

Darlington's Beauty and the Bike project includes a youth exchange with the German state of Bremen.

On Monday one of the project's researchers will be meeting Dr. Reinhard Loske, Bremen's Senator for the Environment, Europe and Transport, to discuss his work on improving Bremen's already good cycling infrastructure.

He also appears in the following video, advocating speed limits for Germany's motorway network. In fact, he is imposing these speed limits on all the motorways in Bremen State anyway.

In Germany, motorways without speed limits is gospel. Like America's freedom to bear weapons, the vast majority of Germans see fast driving on motorways as sacrosanct. Dr. Loske is not exactly the establishment's favourite politician, limiting their god-given freedom to burn fuel. But he understands when it's necessary to confront national orthodoxy - to rebel. Even when this means taking on the most powerful political lobby in Germany, the car industry.

Our own "national orthodoxy", as far as transport is concerned, also revolves around the car. To deny our citizens their god-given right to drive the kids 500 yards to school, to the shops, or to the local office, is not only too much for our politicians, but "corridors of certainty" are required to make the trip faster, easier, and more direct.

Heaven forbid the idea that we might disrupt this sacred tarmac by taking a square inch of road space away from the car to construct safe cycle paths. The only space available for such fanciful stuff round here seems to be pavements. If there is a definition of the political rebel that we need here in Darlington, it is the politician brave enough to state the obvious - road space, especially on our main roads, needs to be taken from cars.

The local authority have successfully encouraged many Darlingtonians to switch from car to bicycle. But a cursory count on the streets of the town will tell you that, unlike we seasoned cyclists, these beginners are very often seen on our pavements. The main roads are clearly regarded as just too dangerous.

Our "national orthodoxy" reaction to this, of course, is to curse and scream at those wicked cyclists - and we all know how easily this attitude spreads to include all cyclists. But the brave politician, the politician willing to reflect and understand, must rebel against this orthodoxy, defend cyclists, and state the obvious conclusion. These new cyclists need proper infrastructure.

So until the day we hear this on our own transport agenda, lets celebrate the art of political rebellion, German style.

...and by the way, we hope to invite Dr. Loske to Darlington in the future.

Do It By Cycle

Do It By Cycle has been designed to help people in the Tees Valley area get back into the saddle again. In it, you'll find a host of top tips, local cycle routes, cycling events, information on cycle training, videos describing everything from what clothing to wear; to how to tackle roundabouts, and a forum to share your thoughts about cycling and maybe find some cycling buddies.

A View From The Cycle Path

I've had a couple of stories from David Hembrow's excellent blog, A View From The Cycle Path, that I've been meaning to blog about but haven't found the time.

David is Brit abroad, living in Assen in Holland. He makes and sells custom bike baskets and leads study tours of bike infrastructure. His blog does an excellent job of summing up the facilities there and highlighting the differences between the UK and Holland. When I realised that I had his last four posts marked as unread in my feed reader, I thought I should get around to linking to them, even if I didn't have time to write a full post about each!

* Funding priorities
* Anatomy of a reliable, everyday bicycle
* Leaving a village
* Cyclists are ill less often - Dutch companies gain competitive advantage

While you're there, have a look at the rest of David's site for a flavour of how cycling in Darlington could be.

An upside-down approach?

So, after my last post where we see it done right in Holland, here's a link to a post on Copenhagenize about Australian plans for cycle paths.

At first glance, the proposed design looks good. The kerb is moved slightly into the road and the widened path is to be shared use by cyclists and pedestrians. In fact, it's almost the approach being used in Darlington, except some space is actually being taken from the road, rather than just doing it where paths are already wide enough.

However, as the post explains, this approach has a host of problems, so why not simply do it properly in the first place and have an on-road segregated cycle lane?

A Dutch Shopping Trip by bike

Imagine riding your bike 2km to a supermarket. Imagine being able to ride your bike right up to the doors, in through the doors and to park it inside. Imagine doing your shopping while enjoying a free cup of coffee. Then, imagine riding home again.

Now, imagine doing this on cycle infrastructure so good that you can hold a digital camera in one hand in front of you while doing it. 2km, on a loaded bike one-handed.

Impossible? In Darlington: yes. In Assen, where bike paths are gritted, well surfaced, get right of way when crossing roads, bypass traffic lights and traffic lights, and are of a decent width: no.

David Hembrow explains how it is possible on his excellent blog, A View From the Cycle Path and you can watch it for yourself in the video below.

Helmet hair and perspiration prevent women getting in the saddle

New research commissioned by Cycling England has revealed that two thirds (64%) of women say they never cycle and just 2% cycle every day.

Men are still three times more likely to cycle than women. Today’s poll suggests that the perceived effect of cycling on appearance, together with a lack of confidence in cycling on the road, is behind this gender imbalance.

Women are three times more likely to cycle indoors on an exercise bike (14%) than to work (4%). When it comes to cycling to work, it seems that fear of being anything less than well groomed in front of colleagues is an off-putting factor. Among 18-34 year old women:

* 58% wouldn’t want to arrive at work sweaty
* 50% would be worried about getting wet in the rain
* 38% wouldn’t want to have to carry a change of clothes
* 38% say there is nowhere to shower at work
* 27% would be concerned about ‘helmet hair’
* 19% wouldn’t want colleagues to see them without make-up or stepping out of the office shower.

What the research fails to consider, however, is just how ethno-centric such perceptions are. When attitudes are compared to those amongst women in cycling-friendly cultures, concerns about helmets, showers and sweating miraculously disappear - because they are simply not needed.

The study contrasts with a film and photography project currently underway in Darlington and in Bremen, Germany, which explores the attitude of teenage girls to cycling in both communities. Cycling is highly popular - and seen as fashionable - in cycle-friendly Bremen. Most girls in Darlington lose interest in cycling by the time they are 15 years old.

Attitudes and infrastructure appear to be strongly connected - good, safe cycling infrastructure that offers car-free routes most of the time means that cyclists can travel at their own pace, and not have to battle with motorised traffic. Attitudes to cycling change as a result. When teenagers in Bremen were asked how they deal with rain, they replied "we use an umbrella, of course".

Obligatory Olympics post: The Active Spectator strategy

The London Cycling Campaign has set out some recommendations for the 2012 London Olympic Games:

The Active Spectator strategy

Promoting cycling and walking is a cost effective way to enable many spectators to reach Olympic venues without contributing to pollution or congestion. Walking and cycling are also highly accessible to all Londoners as well as visitors from abroad.
Cycle parking
Ubiquitous secure covered cycle parking needs to be provided at all Olympic venues and local stations.
Cycle promotion
Use of pedal cycles should be integral to all aspects of activities relating to the Olympics, including service vehicles and deliveries, as well as journeys within Olympic sites by athletes and officials.
Access for cycle users and pedestrians
Olympic facilities should be as accessible as possible to cyclists and pedestrians, within the constraints of security.
Cycle hire
Flexible cycle hire facilities at convenient London locations need to be provided for those who wish to rent bikes.
Cycle routes
An active spectator games will need dedicated routes from Central London (highest hotel capacity, and hence many visitors) to the main Olympic zones.
Integrated transport
Multi-modal journeys which include cycling will be a key factor in delivering the Active Spectator Games.
Paralympics and Disabled Spectators
The Paralympics are an opportunity for the Olympic Family to act as role models for people with disabilities, and to demonstrate the ways in which modified and companion cycles can allow them to participate as active spectators.
The Olympic Legacy
Residential and commercial developments in the Stratford area should both include adequate cycle parking and, in the case of commercial and public buildings, changing and storage areas for cyclists.

[via Competitive Cycling on Velorution]

Dave Gorman's new car

Comedian Dave Gorman has just got a new car which isn't a car, it's a trailer for his bike.